When Grażyna Bacewicz’s compositions were performed outside Poland, she occasionally received letters addressed to “Dear Mister Bacewicz” or “Cher Monsieur Grażyna Bacewicz.” Even in the latter half of the 20th century, some found it hard to believe that a woman could be a true creator, assuming that gender played a significant role in artistic talent. Nonetheless, Grażyna Bacewicz is recognized as the first Polish composer since Maria Szymanowska to achieve international fame and secure a lasting place in music history.
by Iwona Lindstedt
Grażyna was born in Łódź into a Polish-Lithuanian family. Her mother, Maria née Modlińska, came from a landed gentry family, and her father, Vincas Bacevičius, came to Łódź from what was then known as Trans-Niemen Lithuania. In 1899, due to his sympathies with the Lithuanian national movement, he was exiled by the tsarist authorities deep into the Russian empire. It was according to his wish that his daughter, born on February 5, 1909, was given a name derived from the Lithuanian adjective meaning “beautiful,” a name created by Adam Mickiewicz and bestowed upon the title character of one of his poems.
Together with her three siblings – Kiejstut, a future pianist and chamber musician; Witold-Vytautas, a pianist and composer; and Wanda, a poet – Grażyna was raised in an atmosphere steeped in a love for the arts and a reverence for creative work. “From an early age, my siblings and I lived in a world of sounds because our parents loved music,” she recalled in an interview. She initially learned to play the violin and piano under her father’s guidance before enrolling at the Helena Kijeńska-Dobkiewicz Music Conservatory in Łódź, a school with an excellent reputation in the city. Grażyna made her public debut as a “child prodigy.” Already in 1916, she and her brothers were performing violin and piano pieces at school-hosted “musical afternoon tea” events. Though she showed exceptional skill as a virtuoso, she was initially undecided about which instrument to pursue for her career. Additionally, at the age of thirteen, she discovered a passion for composing, publicly presenting her first original work – Theme with Variations – in public in 1925. In 1928, after completing her studies at the Conservatory and passing her high school exams at the Janina Pryssewicz girls’ gymnasium, Grażyna began her studies at the Warsaw Conservatory. She chose three majors: composition under Kazimierz Sikorski, violin under Józef Jarzębski, and piano under Józef Turczyński. She also enrolled in philosophy at the University of Warsaw, but dropped out after a year and a half. She would eventually also abandon her studies in piano to focus on the other two specializations. At the beginning of her artistic career, she was primarily seen as a violinist, and her ambitions as a composer were not taken very seriously. Years later, Grażyna recalled this time with a sense of humor: “‘Has the lady lost her way? What is the lady looking for here? This is not the University […]. This is the composition class.’ That was more or less how Professor Sikorski’s classmates greeted me.”
Her journey through successive stages of her musical education unfolded against the backdrop of significant changes in her family’s circumstances. From 1923, Grażyna’s father, who never concealed his patriotic feelings, lived in independent Lithuania, where he settled in Kaunas and began intensively teaching. Three years later, his son Witold (Vytautas) joined him and became one of the leading Lithuanian modernist composers. Meanwhile, Grażyna, along with her mother and sister, settled in Warsaw. Although Maria and Vincas never formally divorced and Grażyna often traveled to Lithuania, the family remained permanently separated.
In 1932, Bacewicz received two diplomas from the Warsaw Conservatory. Her violin diploma recital was a brilliant success. In the composition exam, she presented four works: Violin Sonata, String Quartet No. 2, Sinfonietta for String Orchestra and the psalm De Profundis Clamavi. However, due to the conservative views of the examiners, she did not receive the highest mark. In any case, she was facing crucial decisions about her professional future. Initially, she sought work in Kaunas, but after being turned down, she decided to move to Paris – relying solely on financial support from her family as she had no scholarship. In Paris, she pursued further studies in the violin class of André Tourret and composition with Nadia Boulanger at the École Normale de Musique. This period of focused creativity led to the composition of six works, including her Wind Quintet, which won first prize ex aequo in a competition for women composers organized in May 1933 by the Society “Aide aux femmes de professions libre.”
After returning to Poland, Grażyna taught at her alma mater, the Łódź Conservatory, for a year while also conducting and composing. From 1935 to 1938, she served as the concertmaster of the Polish Radio Orchestra, which was founded by Grzegorz Fitelberg. It was with this orchestra that she premiered her Violin Concerto No. 1. In 1935, when the 1st International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition was announced, Grażyna decided to participate, studying under the supervision of Carl Flesch in Paris. Although she performed exceptionally well in the first stage of the competition, she ultimately did not win a prize, receiving only the 1st distinction. This experience likely influenced her later decision to abandon the violin in favor of composition.
Grażyna Bacewicz spent the war and the German occupation in Warsaw. During this time, she continued her creative work, though her participation in musical life was limited to performances at public and secret concerts, including the premiere of her String Quartet No. 2 at one such event. Grażyna also focused on her family. In August 1936, she married a doctor, Andrzej Biernacki, and cared for her sick mother and her daughter Alina, born in 1942. After the war, Grażyna resumed her concert performances, first in Lublin, where she briefly lived, and later in other cities in Poland, often performing with her brother Kiejstut. In 1946, she embarked on a three-month tour in France, and even considered settling in Paris permanently. However, she ultimately returned to Poland and rejoined the local musical scene, which was becoming increasingly subject to the pressures of the communist authorities’ so-called cultural policy. She composed several works before 1949, including Violin Concerto No. 2, Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano, and perhaps her most popular piece, the Concerto for String Orchestra.
Grażyna Bacewicz managed to survive the challenging era of socialist realism with her integrity intact. For years, she tried to adopt a morally acceptable compromise with the authorities, particularly through her use of folklore themes in her compositions. During the 1940s and 1950s, she became one of the leading figures in the music community, achieving success both as a violinist and composer. In 1951, she won first prize at the International Composition Competition in Liège, Belgium, for her 4th String Quartet. As she increasingly realized the importance of the creative potential she carried within, she gradually gave up solo violin performances, reserving her performances to her own compositions. This decision was further influenced by a serious car accident in 1954.
She was not only a composer, but also actively engaged in various organizational activities. Bacewicz held important positions within the Polish Composers’ Union, and served as a jury member for numerous performance and composition competitions. In 1956, the International Festival of Contemporary Music was launched, later known as the “Warsaw Autumn,” which became an annual platform for presenting her new works. As a composer, Bacewicz followed a specific set of values inherited from neoclassicism, while also embracing new elements, particularly in terms of sound color. One of the first examples of this approach was her Music for Strings, Trumpets, and Percussion, performed at the Warsaw Autumn in 1959. This piece was awarded the third point (the highest in the field of orchestral works) a year later, at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. In her 6th String Quartet, she employed the dodecaphonic technique, a method still regarded as a hallmark of modern compositional skill. Her 1961 work, Pensieri Notturni for Orchestra, fully demonstrated her sensitivity to sound color, featuring intriguing, shimmering, and openwork constellations of sounds.
Bacewicz’s greatest measurable success as a composer in the final decade of her life was winning the gold medal at the International Queen Elizabeth of Belgium Composition Competition in Brussels for her 7th Violin Concerto. By 1956, Bacewicz’s oeuvre had expanded significantly, including two ballets (Esik in Ostend and the unfinished Desire), the radio opera The Adventures of King Arthur, and numerous other orchestral and chamber compositions, as well as music written for the theater.
In the 1960s, Grażyna also turned her talents to writing. During this period, she produced a series of autobiographical short stories entitled Znak szczególny (Distinctive Sign), published in 1970, which were characterized by a sharp sense of humor. She also authored novels and the play Jerzyki, albo nie jestem ptakem (Swifts, or I Am Not a Bird), which was performed in 1968 by the Polish Television Theater. Today, Bacewicz’s literary talents can be further explored by reading her crime novel Sidła (Snare), published in 2018, which features a fast-paced, surprising, and skillfully executed plot. Adding to her achievements, from 1966-69, she taught a composition class at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw, all while balancing her roles as a wife and mother. It is no exaggeration to say that Grażyna Bacewicz was a titan of productivity. She wrote about how she managed to function efficiently on so many “fronts”: “Nature — by graciously gifting me with compositional talents – has additionally equipped me with something that allows me to cultivate these talents. Namely, I have a tiny, invisible engine, thanks to which I can do in ten minutes what others can do in an hour: thanks to it, instead of walking, I can run, I can write fifteen letters in half an hour, my pulse even beats much faster than others, and I was born in the seventh month.”
Grażyna Bacewicz’s death on January 17, 1969, came as a shock. She passed away from a heart attack, brought on by complications from an infection. A few days earlier, in the middle of a frosty winter, she had attended the concert featuring the compositions of her colleague Tadeusz Baird, wearing only light shoes… This “first lady of Polish music,” as violist Stefan Kamasa called her, left behind a wealth of warm memories and a substantial body of work. Her music, which she described as a blend of rapacity mixed with lyricism, is definitely worth listening to.
Author: Prof. Iwona Lindstedt – Professor at the Institute of Musicology, University of Warsaw
Translation: Alicja Rose & Jessica Sirotin
